Dress Rehearsal

Through some of the “genres” (novel, auto fiction, essays, journal) given to a writer to express themselves, Milena Busquets continues her quest to explain the world, or some of it, through her life and the experiences of a “privileged” woman in a privileged part of the world. Barcelona, Cadaqués, children, boyfriends, lovers, friends, the publishing world into which she was born, the experience of trying to write without imposture, the long shadow of a dead mother, time passing by, success, failure, fear, sex, solitude, and freedom.

Her books can be read as a continuous account of what it means to be a woman nowadays. In Dress Rehearsal, like in her other books, this happens over the course of a year. It includes a long story (a sort of “nouvelle”) and short texts dealing with familiar topics—the end of love, seduction, men, football, being a woman writer, the publishing world and the heart of it—and, ten years later, she revisits This Too Shall Pass (También esto pasará), the book that turned her into a literary figure. This time there is no Blanca—the narrative voice is that of the author herself, who, three months before the ten year anniversary of her mother’s death, decides one day, out of the blue (or not so much out of the blue) that her mother did not love her, which forces her once again to look around (at the present and past, loves and lovers, books and literature, babies and teenagers, freedom and fear) to try to explain where she is at now. 

Deep and frivolous, fun and depressing, teenager-like yet wise as a hundred-year-old grandmother, braver than ever, meticulous in her observation of details that make us who we are, hilariously funny and devastatingly sad, this is Milena Busquets in tip-top form.